


Eleven Down

by brimfulofasha



Category: C-Pop, 奔跑吧 | Keep Running (China TV)
Genre: Gen, Mild character death, all the keep running gang is here, huddling for warmth and cuddling for warmth aren't that different uwu, luhan is bad with girls apart from when there's a plane crash when he's somehow even worse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23866777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brimfulofasha/pseuds/brimfulofasha
Summary: Completely self-indulgent disaster fic xoxo
Kudos: 1





	Eleven Down

**Author's Note:**

> set immediately after keep running s5e01. don't ask me why they're all flying home together, nor the logistics of where the plane was going because damn girl, i really haven't thought about all that.
> 
> usual plane crash warnings: mild peril, mild gore, a little off-screen character death. if you really wanna know who dies before you read, check the end notes.

Eleven down was _catastrophe_.

Luhan filled in the _o_ with a sigh, wishing he'd been given the opportunity to drink himself into unconsciousness like he usually did when faced with the prospect of a flight. Unfortunately these sorts of work things required a semblance of professionalism, and that meant remaining sober. He looked around the small private plane that Zhejiang TV had hired to ferry them between Keep Running filming locations, noting with jealousy just how many of his fellow cast members were sleeping. He wished he was asleep. He'd forgotten to ask the doctor to refill his prescription for sleeping tablets before he left, and without them — or the comforting embrace of a drunken stupor — he was left wide awake and stressed.

What he wouldn't give right now for someone to give him a short sharp punch to the temple and knock him clean out.

He was contemplating getting up and helping himself to something very strong from the in-flight bar anyway, the consequences be damned, when the entire right-hand-side of the plane jolted underneath his feet and they dropped what felt like 20 metres all at once. As the plane lurched, his mostly empty cup of coffee tipped over, and the cold dregs ran across the open puzzle book onto the lap of the sleeping Deng Chao beside him. Across the aisle, Carina Lau jerked awake and looked around, confused with sleep, and then said, "oh my _god_."

A long black line of smoke was cutting horizontally across her window.

"Miss, I need you up here," the pilot's voice crackled over the speakers, and the air hostess in her little skirt ran past them down the aisle, towards the cockpit. She stopped at the door to the cabin to say, "your seatbelts —"

"What's going on? Do you need any help?" Li Chen asked.

"No, no, please, it’s nothing to worry about. Please remain seated and make sure your seatbelts are all securely fastened." She spoke robotically with a fixed unnatural grin, like she was reading it off an autocue rather than having any input in what was coming out of her mouth. Then she opened the door to the cockpit, leaving them alone.

The rest of the passengers looked at each other from their leather seats. For a long moment, the only noise was the crystal glasses in the shiny, polished-wood bar at the end of the cabin as they rattled back and forth in their holders every time the plane hit a patch of clouds.

"Should we —" Cho Lam started then stopped. " _Can_ we make a phone call, do you think?"

Awkwardly reaching into his trouser pocket, Luhan pulled out his mobile phone and tried turning it on. Even at this altitude it somehow got a couple of bars of reception. Maybe he should put a little more effort into those Oppo sponsorship photoshoots and commercials after all. He stared at it for a few seconds, then hit Lao Gao's speed-dial with one hand, tightening his seatbelt according to the air hostess' orders with the other. 

The call went to voicemail. Of course it did. He wasn't sure if he was sorry about that or not.

"Listen, bro," he said, trying not to accidentally eavesdrop on Chen He crying to his mother in front of him. "I'm fairly certain you'll be giving me shit for this call tomorrow, and then we'll have a big laugh about it, so don't freak out too much, but the plane I'm on…. It's having some issues… so, just in case, uh." He stopped for a moment, tried to figure out what he wanted to say despite his brain being frozen with panic. 

He'd always known flying was a bad idea. 

"Just in case," he mumbled falteringly, "just in case… tell my parents, tell them, it's okay. I'm okay. I mean, I'd do it all over again the same way. My life, that is. Well, I wouldn't get on this plane, that's for certain, but the rest of it… I love them. And they were great parents. And, and I was proud to be their son. Alright? And I love you, man. And I'm kinda glad I didn't get through to you, because you'd probably say something sappy and I'd start crying, and I don't wanna die crying. So fuck that."

He told himself that was good enough, and hung up, stashing his phone back in his pocket to avoid the temptation of phoning everyone he'd ever so much as spoken to. On the other side of the aisle to him, next to Carina, Guan Xiaotong was still talking quietly into her phone, half-curled in her seat to hide her face. Luhan looked away to try and give the kid some privacy and ended up staring out of the window.

Outside it was pretty much solid grey, thick heavy clouds rushing past the wing. He couldn't see the ground but his stomach told him they were heading down, and fast.

The air hostess came back into the cabin, the pallor of her face broken only by the red marks where it looked like she'd pinched her cheeks to try to bring them some colour. "I need you all to hang up and listen to me now," she announced gently, and then demonstrated how to take the brace position in their seats.

"I have to go sit down myself," she said once they had all copied her movements like trained monkeys. "Remember, once we're on the ground, you need to go straight to the exit and get out of the plane. Don't bother with your things, or any other passengers, just get out and wait at a safe distance. The pilot has radioed the nearest air traffic control tower. They're sending a rescue team to pick us up. There's nothing to worry about. Alright?"

She went to a little flimsy flip-down seat attached to the wall at the very back of the plane and belted herself in. Outside, the clouds were starting to thin, and Luhan thought he was seeing glimpses of the ground at decidedly not a normal angle for ground to exist at, until a sudden gust of wind cleared the clouds and he realised it wasn't the ground he was looking at but mountains, huge and grey and snow-capped, and the plane wasn't so much above them as next to them.

Yuan Shanshan and Dilraba were sitting together near the front of the plane, their faces both looking a little green at the edges as they muttered under their breath. Luhan thought maybe they were praying. Zheng Kai and Bosco didn't appear to be faring much better, sat directly behind the two girls and looking just as sickly. Wei Daxun, sitting next to Chen He, and directly in front of Luhan, hadn't moved at all from the brace position the air-hostess had made them copy, his face pushed down against his thighs.

Across the aisle, Guan Xiaotong was staring into space, her shoulders curled forward as her body hunched in on itself, her face blank with terror. Luhan felt the same way. "Hey," he said, and reached across to physically shake her out of it. "You okay?" 

Xiaotong jerked in her seat and looked over at him, eyes still wet and blank. He squeezed her shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring manner and she blinked at him dazedly, before pillowing her head on her lap and cradling it with her arms. The plane was tipping at an angle beneath their feet and Luhan felt a strange sense of calm come over his body, too panicked to even panic any longer, and then his face was cold and wet and sticky, and he had to wipe at his eyes to open them, a sound like an old-fashioned steam kettle whistling somewhere around him.

"Lu-ge!" Xiaotong was looming over him, tapping at his face. "Lu-ge, come on, wake up! You have to get up now — _Lu-ge!_ "

"You have to put on your seatbelt," he said, thickly, his tongue following a metallic taste around his mouth. "The lady said." The world around him was a hazy grey, and he realised they weren't moving any more. The air was full of a mixture of acrid smoke and a strange liquorice stink from the smashed liquor bottles at the bar. His stomach churned at the smell of it, the muscles burning where the seat belt buckle had dug into his abdomen.

God, his head hurt.

"Luhan, are you even listening?" Xiaotong asked, an edge of panic in her voice. There was blood on her cheek. "We have to get out of the plane."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Luhan said, but his fingers weren't co-operating, fumbling with the seat belt mechanism.

"No, you need to —" Xiaotong started, then reached down to open it herself.

Luhan staggered to his feet then sank right back down on his seat without passing Go, holding on to the headrest of the empty seat in front of him while his head span a full 360 degrees on his neck, or what felt like it. His guts tried to jump up his throat. He clung to the seat to ride it out, eyes clenched shut, breathing deeply through his nose until his stomach stopped churning and he could attempt another go at getting up.

"Come on," Xiaotong said desperately, coughing. "I'm sorry but there's no time."

"Yeah," Luhan repeated again, with a nod he instantly regretted. But he couldn't make his legs move, couldn't make anything move, and Xiaotong had to haul one of his arms over her shoulders and heave him to his feet, her body lopsided thanks to a clearly injured ankle. Together, they stumbled blindly down a metre or two of aisle, shoving their way past bits of broken seat and pushing something heavy out of their way, hidden from them by the smoke, before suddenly falling right into snow — snow everywhere, all around them, a clump of stumpy trees on a ridge in the distance the only landmark in the whirling white.

"Where… where did the rest of the plane go?" Xiaotong said out loud, although no answer was necessary. Only the tail remained. The whole front of the fuselage and the wings and the engines and the cockpit were gone completely, like someone had sliced the plane clean off.

There was no sign of life anywhere around.

Already shivering, they stood there, watching the snowfall for a few minutes as the cool clean air soothed their bleary smoke eyes and lungs. "Maybe we should go back in and get the blankets?" Xiaotong suggested, looking back into the gaping mouth of the plane billowing black smoke.

"One sec," Luhan said, having to force the words out of his mouth, lips clumsy like he'd had a numbing injection at the dentist. With one hand on her side to brace himself, he slowly inched himself down into a crouch and scooped up a handful of snow and rubbed his face with it, breathing deeply. The prickly coldness stung, but it woke him up a little bit.

They carefully made their way back inside the wreckage, and Xiaotong said, "oh, my god, wait — the airhostess —". She headed for the back of the cabin, and Luhan didn't — couldn't — think quick enough to stop her.

"Oh." Xiaotong stopped short as she reached their seats, and Luhan reached her too late to do anything more than turn her gently away.

"Don't faint," Luhan said, rubbing her back as she breathed shallowly, swallowing hard. "Come on, don't think about it, there's nothing you can do to help her. Let's start looking for supplies." He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her gently towards what was left of the bar at the very back of the plane's cabin, behind what was left of the air hostess.

He turned back to the woman's body and realised he didn't even know her name, couldn't remember if he'd never been told it or if he'd just not been paying attention, too caught up in his usual pre-flight panicked ritual. The shrapnel — he swallowed down sour saliva, feeling sick himself. At least it looked as though it had been quick. Small mercies. He got one of the blankets down from an overhead locker and covered her face with it.

"I found a first aid kit," Xiaotong called from the back.

"Yeah? That's good," Luhan said, "make sure we bring that."

"I've found something else too," she said, voice oddly flat and mechanical, and when Luhan stepped over to look, she pointed silently at a bloody smear that ran down the fake wood panelling of the cabin wall and ended on the floor where half a human arm lay.

"It's the air hostess'," Luhan heard himself say, despite knowing her corpse had both arms still attached. "That little fold-out seat didn't protect her the way the rest of ours did. I'm sure everyone else is fine." He adjusted the blanket again, making sure her whole upper body was concealed from view.

They scavenged the wreckage for anything else they could find that seemed to be of use. They took the rest of the blankets, bottles of water, and filled their jacket pockets with little bags of peanuts and crisps and the little after dinner mints. Then something within the mechanism of the plane beneath them creaked noisily, and even more smoke flooded through the cabin and poured out of the hole. They made for the hole themselves, coughing and eyes watering as the black billowing smoke chased them out.

Just a few steps from the relative shelter of the side of the plane, the cold hit like a solid wall, so fast some of the tears froze on Luhan's eyelashes and he had to rub them away. Immediately around the plane, the snow had been flattened both by the weight and the heat of the crash, but after that it was piled thick and heavy. With each other's help they managed to struggle up on top of it, but the fresh snowfall was soft and powdery, and they sank down to their thighs in it with every step. It was hard work to travel even a metre, and Luhan's muscles were burning with it by the time they reached the trees and collapsed against the biggest one, panting heavily with exhaustion.

After a minute or two of silence punctuated only by their heavy breath, Xiaotong said, "my phone isn't working."

It took Luhan a few moments to understand what she was even talking about. He dug into his pockets for his own phone, but it was dead too, the screen cracked right through and bleeding some sort of black chemical juice. Worthless. He tossed it to one side. He wasn't ever doing a phone commercial ever again.

"Someone's got to notice that, though, right?" Xiaotong said somewhat uncertainly, and Luhan looked back at the wreckage and the thick pillar of smoke rising from it. It vanished into the snowfall overhead as it rose.

He leant back against the tree, letting it carry his weight. His head felt so heavy, his thoughts thick and slow and soupy in his mind. He felt like he was standing somewhere outside his own body, like he'd left his brain behind in the overhead luggage compartment on the plane. He could see Xiaotong looking at him with worry, little sideways scared glances. 

He had to get it together.

"We need to make a shelter," he said, "get out of this snow," and started shoving away the snow heaped at the bottom of the cluster of trees with his legs. They formed makeshift walls with it on three sides, packing it together with hard slaps until it was solid, and finally got down to the dead stubbly grass. They laid down one of their blankets as a floor, then sat down on top of it, with their backs against the tree trunk, wrapped up together in the rest of the blankets, with one over their heads.

It was eerily quiet.

The snow muffled everything, smothered everything, and only the bitter chill of the wind managed to cut through the strange floating feeling of detachment that Luhan still couldn't shake off. He felt dizzy, sick with it. He kept getting hit with flashes of the air hostess' ruined face, the blood running down her neck, purple where it landed on her uniform. He pressed his fingers into his eyes, pushing against the lids, like maybe he could squeeze the image out of his head if only he pressed hard enough.

Eight hours ago he'd been in a hotel restaurant in Zhejiang, eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast and coffee, signing a couple of autographs for the starstruck waitress, feeling like he was pretty hot shit, and he'd never seen anyone killed. Now he was crash-landed in the middle of nowhere, cuddling with a nineteen-year-old with a broken ankle, with no supplies, and a dead woman's blood on his sleeve.

The whole thing was another level of absurdity, and the only thing stopping him from laughing was how much Xiaotong would worry about his mental state if he started cackling like he was demented. The PR people and tabloids had been trying to push the secret relationship angle onto him for years, and it had never really bothered him too much, the way they'd forensically analysed every woman he so much as spoke to. Hell, the fact they'd simply stood next to each other and chatted while filming was probably going to set weibo afire with conspiracies. There were probably already fanclubs supporting their relationship. And a lot more fanclubs sending her death threats.

If only they could see me now, Luhan thought. A semi-laugh bubbled up in his chest at the idea. Poor Xiaotong — the kid was sweet, she definitely didn't deserve the media storm that was heading her way when they found out about this. They'd only spoken a handful of times, and now they were huddling for warmth under the same pile of blankets, and she'd almost certainly saved his life, getting him off that plane.

"Thank you, by the way," Luhan said.

There wasn't any answer.

He looked over at her and realised that the jittering making the blankets shake wasn't his own body shivering but Xiaotong, shaking so hard her teeth were clattering in her skull. The kid was starting to get a dazed glassy look in her eyes.

"Hey, come here," Luhan tugged her over. Xiaotong didn't resist, although she tried to say something when he pulled away the blankets covering them, but she couldn't actually get her mouth to form words. "No, it's okay, hang on." Luhan pulled her back against his chest, surrounding her skinny body with his arms and legs, before covering them both with the blankets again.

It was more than a little weird, being so close to someone he'd only met twice, but it definitely helped. After half an hour or so, Xiaotong woke up enough to half turn in his embrace and tuck herself closer against his chest, face hidden in the crook of his neck. Luhan wrapped his arms even tighter around her, and both of them curled in smaller. Finally, their shivering started to die down, and Luhan was able to feel his face and fingers again, prickling and painful.

"Uh...Thanks," Xiaotong said a little awkwardly. "I can —"

"Relax," Luhan said. "Huddling for warmth in a blizzard after a plane crash is a totally respectful and legitimate reason to be this close to a guy. Your reputation will be fine."

"Oh, okay," Xiaotong said, sounding way too relieved, which almost made Luhan laugh except his head way too much for that. "Um, do you want some peanuts?"

They ate three of the little packets each. Luhan still felt sick to his stomach, but was starving nonetheless. Probably due to the adrenaline, he thought.

**  
  
**~*~*~*~ **  
  
  
**

He jerked awake sometime later, possibly very early in the morning judging by what little visibility there was in their shelter. Xiaotong was already awake, breathing fast, her heartbeat jumping under her skin. "What was —" she began, but another boom hit and blanked out whatever she was saying, like a giant crack of thunder right above them. The tree behind them shook violently and dumped frozen bricks of snow on the blanket over their heads.

"Is it the plane?" Luhan said, unconvinced himself. A low rumbling sound slowly emerged from under the whistling of the wind and got louder, faster and louder, and suddenly it was like being at a train station while a high-speed train blasted past, roaring overhead as the tree shrieked in protest. The blankets sagged with snow, pummelling down onto them despite their best efforts to hold them, until the faint light blotted out completely. 

The noise stopped.

"Are we — are we buried? Lu-ge, are we BURIED?" Xiaotong said in rising panic, beneath him in the dark. Her hands were knotted tightly in Luhan's shirt where he was kneeling on all fours above her, holding the blankets up with his back. If Luhan had a free hand he'd be holding on pretty tight himself, though, so he wasn't exactly in a place to criticise.

"It's okay," he said. "Okay. We've still got air, we can get out of here. All right?" He couldn't see her nod, but he felt it. "I'm going to try and tunnel up against the tree trunk, okay? Can you hold the blankets up if I move?"

"Yeah," Xiaotong said, a tremble audible in her voice, and unwound herself from Luhan to sit up and give him a break from holding the blankets

The snow wasn't too heavy or tightly packed above them, but there was a whole fucking lot of it, like swimming through mud. Their little snow cave was almost hot now, sweat running down Luhan's back underneath his shirt despite the frigid temperature outside. He pushed the snow out to either side, like doing a breaststroke in the snow, back pressed up against the trunk of the tree as he inched up little by little.

"Man, I am never going to complain about working out ever again," he said when he was braced halfway up to standing, mostly so he could hear Xiaotong laugh, even if it did come out a little wobbly and tearful.

"I didn't realise you _did_ work out," she said.

"Hey, you're really ruining my manly vibe here," Luhan said, and threw a handful of snow at her face. Xiaotong gave a little hiccup of laughter that sounded much more real, and it made Luhan's chest loosen up some.

He was standing straight up on his tiptoes before he started to see the glow of daylight again, and it took him stretching his arms up combined with a little jump to finally break through the crust on top and bring in some fresh air. 

"I'm through!" he called down, the first thing either of them had said in a while, and Xiaotong said, " _oh my god_ ," like she really meant it. 

Luhan pushed the snow away some more, widening the channel as far as he could reach, and then slowly squirmed back down again into the burrow. While he'd been digging, Xiaotong had been packing the snow against the walls and above them, creating a sort of roof high enough for them to sit up straight together. Luhan stretched his legs out, wincing as his knees clicked, and propped himself up on an elbow. 

"Listen, I think I'm going to have to give you a boost up."

"But then how am I supposed to get you out?" Xiaotong asked.

"Don't worry," Luhan said. "Your body will widen the hole, and I think once my arms are out I can get myself out. This snow's pretty solid. You think you'll be okay up there by yourself for a bit?"

"Yes," Xiaotong said.

She zipped her jacket up most of the way and they stuffed in the blankets as insulation against the cold till she was round as a barrel, and then squeezed in the bottled water and what was left of the plane snacks. 

"That's very _en vogue_ ," Luhan said. "The next big trend."

"Shut up," Xiaotong said, and Luhan laughed at her rudeness, a lot more than the situation really deserved, but it felt good to smile. Especially when Xiaotong said exasperated, "Why is that even funny?" and hit him in the shoulder when he kept laughing, before giving up and laughing too.

Xiaotong wasn't laughing anymore by the time Luhan finally managed to crawl up out of the hole after her, a task that proved a lot more difficult than he had imagined. He collapsed next to her on the snow, panting from exertition, who the fuck cared if it was cold. 

"What?" he asked, once he'd caught his breath.

"Look at the plane," Xiaotong said, in the tiniest voice he'd ever heard. Luhan looked for it. The thin white tip of the tail was sticking up out of the snow, like a shark's fin breaking the surface of the ocean. And that was it. The rest was completely buried. The clouds had cleared and it was a bright sunny day, the slope of bare rock and snow they were on went on for what felt like forever, like a great plateau of frozen wasteland. Past that it was mountains all around, blue-grey and covered with snow, all looking exactly the same. No helicopters, no rescue crews, no magic carpets.

"Okay, soooo, most people would probably feel pretty screwed right now," Luhan said after a minute, and Xiaotong hung her head, "but, look, we're rich and famous, and we just survived both a plane crash _and_ an avalanche, so I'm thinking our luck in life has got to be good enough to get out of this just fine too."

"What are we going to do?" Xiaotong asked. "Are we going to — should we just wait?"

"I dunno, I don't think we can," Luhan said. "If we stay out here, we'll freeze to death. If we stay under there, they'll never see us."

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, you always hear about people getting lost hiking and things, don't you?" Xiaotong said. "I think you're meant to head towards the nearest town, but we don't know which way to go."

"I think heading downwards is pretty safe to start with," Luhan said. He looked at Xiaotong for a minute. "Listen — that snow cave is pretty warm and safe. What if you stick here in case someone finds the plane, and I head down the mountain. We could double our chances."

"No," Xiaotong said immediately. "No way. What if you get hurt? Or it could snow here and I could get buried in there alive. And even if someone found me, then we wouldn't know where you were, or if you found someone, maybe you wouldn't be able to find the way back —" She stopped and took a deep controlled gulp of breath and slowed down. "No. If we're going, let's go together."

"All right," Luhan said, with more than a little relief. He really hadn't wanted to go it alone.

Between them they split a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a bottle of water, stuffed the blankets more tightly into their coats and pulled their hands inside the sleeves. The avalanche had packed the snow hard and tight, and around the trees it wasn't as thick, but it was still rough going. They took turns going in the lead. Xiaotong didn't break through the delicate top crust into the thicker snow below as often as when Luhan went first, but with the wind right in her face she got cold fast, and it creeped Luhan out how quiet and dull she got.

They hadn't gotten that far before it started getting dark again, and even colder than before. "We need to stop while we can still see what we're doing," Luhan said. But Xiaotong kept trudging along in the snow until Luhan went after her and snagged her by the shoulder. "Hey! We need to stop and get under some shelter."

Xiaotong blinked at him dazedly.

"Come on," Luhan said, and dragged her over to the biggest tree of the small cluster dotting the side of the ridge, an old pine with not a lot of snow on the downward side. "Here we are, come on, let's get digging," he said, and got her to help with moving the rest of the snow away. But Xiaotong kept stopping and just standing there listlessly, sagging against the trunk, her breath coming in shallow pants that evaporated instantly into the cold air. Luhan felt like a giant asshole making her start working again, but he was scared to let her stop moving.

He felt around in the shallower snow at the base of the other trees and stumps and managed to find a few dead branches, thick as his arm, and long enough to make a sort of lean-to against the trunk of the tree. He draped a couple of blankets over the structure and packed snow around the bottom to hold it steady against the wind.

He pretty much had to pick Xiaotong up and tip her headfirst inside the shelter; the kid was just way too out of it with cold. Luhan squeezed in after and pulled the blanket walls down behind him, tucking the loose ends under his bottom to keep them in place.

"Hey," he said. "Stay with me, come on." He tugged the blankets out of Xiaotong's stuffed coat and wrapped them around the two of them, pulling her in close to share body heat as he rummaged for a handful of chocolates. "Hey, Xiaotong, talk to me. You gotta wake up." Xiaotong mumbled something vaguely but didn't stir. "Okay, I'm really sorry about this, I promise I don't usually hit women," Luhan muttered, and slapped her smartly on the cheek. She jerked and opened her eyes a little. Luhan slapped her again.

"I'm freezing," Xiaotong stammered out.

"I know, kid, I know," Luhan said. "Come on, eat some of this." He managed to get most of the chocolates down her throat, and the food seemed to help a little — well, she started shivering harder, anyway, and that felt like an improvement over not moving at all. Luhan wrapped his arms tightly around her and rubbed her back.

It was too cold for him to sleep himself, and when it finally started getting a little warmer inside their shelter, everything else started to hurt; a slow wave of burning pins and needles that started in his lower back, running down his thighs and up his spine. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and at his temples, _th-thump, th-thump, th-thump_ , like someone trying to hammer a nail into his head. 

He shut his eyes tight against it and tried to breathe through the pain, feeling stupidly like a woman in labour, all the way down to the gut and back out, but his breath kept getting quicker.

"Lu-ge?" Xiaotong whispered, after an hour or so. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he managed, more because he had to be than because he was. "Don't worry, just a headache."

Xiaotong started to talk quietly, a one-sided conversation that Luhan couldn't keep up with past the sound of his blood thumping in his head. The words faded in and out, but he kept breathing in time with the rhythm of her speaking, and somewhere along the line he managed to finally slip into sleep at last.

A few hours later he woke up, still in the pitch black of night, with his stomach knotting up in a cramp of hunger. The headache had faded back into something manageable, and though his body still hurt all over, it was more like the feeling after a rough football match, not the sharp pain of imminent death. Their body heat had warmed the shelter nicely, so it wasn't too bad anymore. Xiaotong was fast asleep on top of him, huddled in tight with her head under the crook of his neck and an arm across his chest, breathing soft and even, a comforting warm weight. Luhan craned his neck to check the blanket walls were still holding tight around them.

Xiaotong stirred at the movement and lifted her head sleepily. "Oh, I'm squashing you," she said, and tried to shuffle backwards.

"No, no, it's fine," Luhan said, holding her in place. "Personal space is not worth losing body heat over." It was kind of comforting, too, a warm weight in the darkness. Not that he was going to say that out loud like some sort of creep.

Xiaotong hesisted for another moment before giving in and settling back down. "Are you feeling better?" she asked. "You didn't eat anything earlier."

"I'm alright," Luhan said. "At this point I might as well save it for the morning." He stretched his neck a little to either side, and felt his joints click. "I think tomorrow we're going to need to start stopping during the day to warm up a little, instead of trying to push through till evening. It's way too cold to walk the whole day."

"I'm sorry," Xiaotong said, quietly.

"Are you kidding me?" Luhan said. "You're doing just great."

"No, I'm not," Xiaotong said, a shake of tears in her voice. "My ankle really hurts and I'm slowing you down. Maybe you were right, I should've stayed back at the plane."

"I'm really glad you didn't," Luhan said. "I might have seven years on you, but it doesn't mean I can get out of this on my own. You saved me back there." Xiaotong didn't say anything, so Luhan considered it for a moment before adding quietly, "You know, my head's still a little messed up."

"The headache?"

"No, more than that," Luhan said. "I'm pretty sure it's a concussion. I've been seeing double here and there, and I can't think straight at all. I don't want to scare you or anything. I mean, I'm pretty certain if my head was going to explode it would have happened by now. But I'm really happy I'm not alone out here."

"Oh," said Xiaotong, softly.

"We're gonna get out of this," Luhan told her, giving her a friendly squeeze. "You know that, right? We're going to be fine." Xiaotong nodded a little against his chest. "Good."

They lay there together for a while, just breathing, the sound uneven enough that Luhan could tell Xiaotong was still awake. The air inside the shelter was heavy and still. Outside there were soft crunching noises that sounded awfully like footsteps, even though he knew they weren't, and the tree above them started creaking in the wind. He felt like he should say something reassuring, talk. Xiaotong has to be pretty freaked out by now — God knew he was freaked out, and he was a grown man. But he couldn't think of a good way to start the conversation, his brain still feeling like mashed potatoes inside his skull.

In the end, Xiaotong was actually the one who started talking. 

"Have you ever gone camping?" she asked, out of nowhere.

"Yeah, a couple of times. I remember me and my dad slept outside by a pond once when I was a kid, I can't remember why," Luhan said with a huff of laughter. "But to be honest, I'd rather spend my nights in the comfort of a hotel room. What about you?"

"Not really," Xiaotong said. "I always thought it would be cool, just, I never really had the time. There was always some TV show or mum and dad had an event I had to go to. I dunno."

"That sucks. Must've been hard growing up in the public eye."

"Aw, I don't know," Xiaotong said, and abruptly fell quiet, got a little smaller, like she felt embarrassed to have come so close to complaining. 

Luhan stared up into the dark in silence for a little while, and then said, "There was this girl, in Korea, when I was studying out there." Xiaotong lifted her head a little, but she didn't say anything. "We were at university together, she was pretty cool, totally put up with me sleeping until noon and working all hours at this bar, never having any spare cash, that kind of thing. We weren't, you know, together. But maybe we could have been."

"What happened?"

"We just stopped hanging out," Luhan said. "After I got signed to SM."

"What?" Xiaotong asked. "But, wasn't she happy for you?"

"Yeah, no, I mean… she was glad I got my big break, she always said I had a face for fame, whatever that means, but she —" Luhan stopped and took a deep breath. "When I got signed, she told me — she said she knew I was going to be big, and she didn't want to be in that world."

"I'm sorry," Xiaotong said, after a minute.

"Yeah," Luhan said. "So, you know, fame sucks, in either direction."

Xiaotong paused for a moment, and then tentatively said, "it's worth it, though, right? I mean, you like doing your music."

Luhan had to fight back a weird impulse to hug the kid. "Yeah," he said, roughly.

"Everybody always thinks," Xiaotong began, "that it's my parents, and that they're all, 'oh, let's make our daughter do all these things and go to all these dumb events' or something, except it's not them, it's me. I'm the one who wants it all. It has to be me, or I couldn't do it, and I don't get, I don't get why people can't see that."

"Most people can't tie their shoelaces at the age you started acting, much less know what they want to do with their lives," Luhan said.

"You didn't?"

"I really, really did not," Luhan said. "I was going in about ten different directions. Football, the army, teaching, going abroad — yeah. I had a good time narrowing it all down to something real, don't get me wrong, but it was definitely the scenic route for me."

"Oh," Xiaotong said. Then, a little wistfully, she added, "I am kind of sorry I never got to go camping."

"We'll go," Luhan said.

"What?"

"This summer. We'll find somewhere nice and quiet, out of the city, and we'll go camping."

"Really?" Xiaotong said.

"Yeah," Luhan said. "We'll bring a little grill and everything, it'll be awesome." And the weirdest thing was, he wasn't just saying that; the idea had just popped into his head, but he really did think it would be fun.

"Huh," Xiaotong said. "That sounds — I think that would be really cool. Make it somewhere warm though."

"All right then, it's a plan," Luhan said. He shifted a little and got the bend of his arm under his head as a pillow. Xiaotong sighed a little and her breathing evened out against his chest. Luhan listened to it until he fell asleep too.

**  
  
~*~*~*~   
  
**

When they woke up the next morning it was snowing steadily again. Without the sun to guide them, there was no way to tell which direction they were headed, so they just kept heading downwards and tried not to worry too much about keeping in a straight line.

"How are you doing?" Luhan asked after a few hours of staggering through the snow. They'd made surprisingly good progress using the tree branches as walking sticks.

"I'm okay," Xiaotong claimed, but her voice was slurred with cold, so they stopped and put together the lean-to again. It was a lot easier to build in the daylight with Xiaotong helping this time, but it was a lot more awkward once they were inside.

"Just let it go," Luhan said, watching Xiaotong press herself against the furthest wall away from him. "We just need to accept the fact that the tabloids are going to write about ten million articles about us sleeping together. No point being cold in the meantime."

"At least you're used to it," Xiaotong said, though she gave up on her dignity and huddled in close. "This is new territory for me."

"You've really never had a fake dating scandal invented by the media?"

"No, well, some of my fans have overanalysed my totally professional working relationship with every young guy I've ever worked with, but I think that was more wishful thinking on their part that I'd finally done something interesting." She stopped and ducked her head in a little.

Luhan started laughing. "They're really that invested in you dating? What the hell. My fans would probably skin any girl I looked at twice alive. They want me single until the day I die."

"It's weird, they really want me to," Xiaotong said. "Go all the way, I mean. With anyone. And then tell them about it in an interview. It's kinda creepy."

"I heard you refuse to do kiss scenes. Is that true? Are you seriously planning on waiting until you've got a ring on your finger before letting your lips touch anyone?" Luhan asked.

"Well," Xiaotong said, after struggling a moment, mouthing at the air. "I'm at least going to wait until I find someone I really like. I know it's childish but I don't want my first kiss to be _fake_."

At some point, they fell asleep while it was still light out without really meaning to, and by the time Luhan opened his eyes it was pitch dark outside. There was a brisk whistle of wind that the blankets couldn't manage to keep out and it felt a lot colder all of a sudden. Xiaotong was already awake and shivering against him.

"Okay," Luhan said, his lips numb with cold. "Listen up, I'm going to make you a bet — um, what do you want to win?"

"Gambling is immoral," Xiaotong said, muffled; she had her face tucked into his neck again.

"Are you kidding me?" Luhan said, appalled, and then Xiaotong huffed a laugh against him. "You're so annoying," Luhan said, and poked her in the side until Xiaotong yelped and tried uselessly to escape the ticking without having to give up proximity to his body heat. "Okay, come on, tell me."

"Um," Xiaotong said, settling back in. "A duet."

"What?" Luhan said.

"A duet," Xiaotong repeated. "If I win, you do a duet with me. Oh, and play your guitar!"

"Aww," Luhan said. "And here I thought you were gonna ask for a car or something expensive. Fine, and if I win, you'll do one with me on my next album."

"But that's not — that's like me winning either way," Xiaotong said. "Lu-ge, you've sold a bajillion albums."

"You never know what's going to happen to the next one," Luhan said. "Okay, the game works like this: we each take turns singing a song and the other person has to name it. The winner is whoever goes longer without missing one. Singing's good when you're cold, gets the oxygen into your blood."

"Okay, but it's got to be a song we've both heard at least once, though," Xiaotong insisted. "No weird one-hit-wonders from before I was born, okay?"

"Fine. It doesn't matter, I'm still going to win," Luhan said.

"You're going down, old man!" Xiaotong said, but neither of them really played to win, too cold to work up the energy for a real competition, instead stretching the game out as long as they could. Luhan finally stumbled on Eye Of The Tiger, of all the crazy things for Xiaotong to pull out.

"How do you even know that song?" Luhan said.

"I'm filming a boxing drama later this year. I watched Rocky for some fighting inspiration, it was work research!"

"Wow, so you're gonna be being paid to beat up whoever your poor co-star is? You definitely win," Luhan said. "Although I get to mock you forever with the knowledge you spend your spare time watching sweaty Sylvester Stallone movies, so it's kind of a draw."

"We could go best of three," Xiaotong said, smiling in the darkness, "if your ego can't handle losing to a little girl."

The game kept them going until morning, when the sun warmed up their little shelter enough that they didn't feel cold before they even started walking. They each ate another packet of crisps — their last two — and split a packet of peanuts, and drank the last bottles of water.

"I know they say you aren't supposed to eat snow, but maybe if we carry it against our bodies it'll melt into liquid," Xiaotong suggested.

They forced as much snow into the two empty plastic bottles as they could, and Luhan slid them alongside the blankets tucked inside his jacket. "Fuck, that's cold!" he swore. "Oh hell no," he added, when Xiaotong made to take one from him, and pushed her off into the lead. "Just concentrate on walking in a straight line, Rocky."

It was definitely a colder day than the day before, and the heavy cold lumps against his skin made it a lot harder to stay warm than he'd expected. Their breath dissipated away in huge white clouds like a steam engine, and the top crust of the snow had gone crunchy and fragile. It broke under his weight with almost every step, leaving him falling through to the thighs and getting covered over with snow.

He had meant to take over the lead at some point during the day, but the cold made him lose track of time and pretty much everything else too, other than moving one foot after the other. Xiaotong kept doggedly going in front of him, and then at some point suddenly turned off and Luhan just mindlessly followed after her, and then they were under an overhang, cold but finally out of the vicious wind.

His hands were shaking so much he could barely manage to unzip his jacket enough to get the bottles out from under the blankets — they'd only half melted, even after all that.

"I think I'm going to have to do it one at a time, from now on," he said, rubbing his abdomen hard, trying to use friction to work out the deep painful chill under his skin. They put the two half-melted bottles aside, wrapped up, and huddled in together again. The sun was still pretty high in the sky, but neither of them suggested moving on.

They played another round of Guess The Song, and after a while, Xiaotong fell into a light doze against his shoulder. Luhan stared at the rock hanging overhead and tried to think of something to do. His head still felt tight and painful, a dull throb that just wouldn't pass, and he was pretty certain he'd never been this hungry in his whole life. They had three packets of peanuts left, a couple more chocolates, and then they'd be running on empty. He hadn't really had much of a plan but he had been hoping they'd simply run into someone, something — a road, a town, a car. The fact they hadn't hit one yet meant they had to be somewhere really in the backend of nowhere. He really wished he'd paid more attention to geography in school. For all he knew it could be a hundred miles to safety and they couldn't make it a hundred miles on no food and only managing to walk three hours a day.

Dying of starvation and/or exposure on a mountain was going to be a really fucked up way to go. Maybe no one would ever find them and it would be some crazy showbiz legend, the two of them disappearing mysteriously, and people would make up stories about spotting them in Macau or Las Vegas or something. Xiaotong woke up when Luhan started cracking up, and he said, "we're gonna be like Elvis," still laughing at himself, and Xiaotong somehow got the joke and she laughed too, and then she got really quiet and still, and Luhan was swallowing hard and putting a hand over his face, and he wrapped an arm around Xiaotong's shoulders and pulled her in tight, saying softly, "It'll be okay. It's going to be okay."

**  
  
~*~*~*~   
  
**

It was somehow even colder the next morning. They didn't dare touch any peanuts at all, just ate a single mint chocolate and drank half of one of the bottles of snow water, and tucked them back in. 

"When we run out of food," Luhan said tentatively, and clenched his hand when he saw Xiaotong flinch. "I think we should find as much of an open spot as we can and just — hunker down, try and build a fire or something. It'll be our best shot to be spotted."

Xiaotong nodded at him sharply, just the once, and they set out again into the snow. The sun was bright, and the snow glare hurt his eyes, so he walked squinting down at the ground, watching where he was putting his feet, trusting Xiaotong's footprints not to lead him astray.

"Lu-ge."

"Hmmm?"

"Lu-ge!" Xiaotong said again, more insistently, snagging his arm. When Luhan looked up, his eyes watered too much at first for him to be seeing much of anything, and when he finally managed to clear them out enough to see what Xiaotong was pointing at, it took a little while longer to sink in. In front of them, poking out across the hill from between some low, bare trees, were five or maybe six roofs.

Barely daring to breathe, they ran the whole way down the hill — even Xiaotong on her dodgy ankle — and into the little street, halfway through the town before they stopped, bent over and lightheaded and gasping. The path of trampled snow they left behind them was the only mark in the long white stretch between the houses. The buildings themselves were all old grey stone shacks, snowed-in up to their windows, and most of those were broken.

"Hello?" Xiaotong called out, politely but unnecessarily. No one answered. They walked down the street and peered into the houses, the shrunken wooden doors opening easily on their hinges: they were all empty, except for a few pieces of old rickety furniture here and there.

"Oh my god, this place is so creepy," Xiaotong said, wrapping her arms around herself.

"It's just an old abandoned town, probably from before the cultural revolution," Luhan said, silently telling himself _you are not allowed to have a breakdown in front of the kid_. "Come on. It's gonna be fine, we can finally get out of the cold."

Xiaotong gulped like she didn't really believe him, but nodded anyway, and after they got to work clearing out the snowdrifts it turned out pretty okay after all, relatively speaking. The best of the old houses was still run-down and crappy by normal standards, but it had a coal stove — an honest to goodness ironcast one still fully functioning — and a hod next to it that had a small pile of coals left by the previous owner ("Are they still in date?" "I don't think coal expires, Lu-ge"). After doing a quick reconnaissance of some of the other buildings, they eventually amassed some matches, some ancient newspaper from a cupboard, and a bottle of homemade baiju that worked to get a roaring fire going in the grate along with some broken-up old wooden furniture to help.

Even better yet, Xiaotong stumbled across a barrel as high as her waist full of dried beans in the corner of a pantry. She dragged Luhan over to help carry it into the house they'd chosen as their own after he'd finished building the fire, and he poked at them dubiously. They were hard as rocks, but still — _food_.

"I think you're supposed to rinse them first," Xiaotong said doubtfully. "Maybe if we cook them for a really long time?"

During their scavenging, they'd found a huge old fashioned washing-tub and some metal pots and lugged those into the house too, full of fresh snow, to melt by the stove. They poured a few handfuls of beans into one of the pots to start cooking, and then Luhan pulled up a couple of mismatched wooden chairs to the stove and sat down with a sigh, slowly working off his shoes. 

His feet hurt like absolute hell, his toes blistered and purple in the places where they weren't yellowed from lack of blood-flow, and a couple of his toenails had come clean off, the beds bruised.

"Woah, that's ugly. Come on, Xiaotong, let's see your damage."

Xiaotong's feet looked even worse if that were possible, and Luhan felt like shit for not thinking. The kid had been walking around in much flimsier shoes compared to his thick-based sneakers, and her toes were curled up and bloodless white. One of her ankles was twice the size of the other, an angry indigo colour. Definitely broken. He had no idea how she'd been walking on that for days.

"It's not that bad," Xiaotong said, attempting to be brave, but she couldn't help her little gasps of pain when she slid her feet into the washtub of water. The water was little more than lukewarm, but it felt boiling hot for the first few minutes as Luhan eased his feet in too.

"Can you move your toes?" Luhan asked after a little while, when it was starting to feel a bit better.

"Ow. Yeah. Ow," Xiaotong said, deep relief in her voice as she carefully wiggled her slowly-pinkening toes. "Ow."

They dried their feet off in front of the fire, and then smothered themselves in the entire tube of antiseptic cream from their stolen first aid kit, before putting on pretty much every bit of gauze and all the band-aids.

"I know this is going to be absolutely humiliating for the both of us, but we should probably rinse out everything else we can, while we're here," Luhan said, "We don't have any soap, but water is better than nothing." And so they ended up stripping and tying blankets round their bodies like roman togas, before getting their t-shirts and socks and underwear and everything else rinsed out and layered on top of the stove to dry.

Xiaotong poked at the beans with a wooden spoon she'd found in a cupboard, but an hour of simmering hadn't made much difference; they were still just a pile of century-old hard pebbles at the bottom of the pot.

"In the meantime," Luhan said, opening up the rest of the bottle of baiju, "I know you're a little young to do the drinking thing, but we're going to have some of this."

"I don't think — I don't — maybe that's not a good idea," Xiaotong stammered, face pink. "I don't think us getting drunk is going to be helpful."

"Trust me, I used to work in a bar," Luhan said. "This stuff's got a load of calories in. Think of it as a meal. A couple of mouthfuls won't get you drunk."

"Okay, then again, I could be totally wrong," he said, fifteen minutes later, when Xiaotong started giggling nonstop. "Should've known a girl as skinny as you would be a lightweight."

"'m not — I'm not drunk!" Xiaotong insisted, standing up with her fists on her hips.. Then she started giggling again and abruptly sat back down in her chair.

"Uh huh," Luhan said, taking another swig from the bottle and shivering in disgust. He'd drank many terrible things at university but this stuff was truly awful. "This would be an awesome moment for some paparazzi to find us."

"No, no, that would be great," Xiaotong said.

"Yeah, you say that now," Luhan said, "but drunk naked pictures on Dispatch last forever." He put the cork back in the bottle and stashed it safely in the corner.

"I don't even care. If they found us we could go get hotpot," Xiaotong said. "And dumplings. I'd even eat a whole bowl of plain rice, as long as it was hot." She looked miserably over at Luhan. "I'm still cold, can we cuddle again?"

"It's not cuddling, it's _huddling_ . Huddling _for warmth_."

"Whatever," Xiaotong said, and flopped her weight heavily against him.

"I think I preferred it when you were shy," Luhan said. He manhandled Xiaotong onto the floor, facing the warmth of the stove, and curled up behind her, pulling the spare blankets over them.

By morning, the beans had actually gotten a little soft.

"I'm going to try one," Luhan said.

"Wait," Xiaotong said. "I should be the one to try it."

"Why?"

"If it's gone bad —"

"I am one hundred percent confident that I have more experience puking up my guts than you do," Luhan said. "Lightweight."

Xiaotong flushed. "I told you I didn't want to drink any!"

"Uh huh," Luhan said. "One word: cuddle."

"Oh my god, shut up." She flailed a punch in the general direction of his arm as Luhan grinned at her. "No, but — listen," Xiaotong said. "If the beans make me sick, you can still go get help. But if you get sick, I'm screwed. I don't think my ankle can make it much further now that I can feel it."

"If you get sick, I'm not going anywhere," Luhan said quietly.

Xiaotong swallowed and said, "well, you're stupid, then."

Luhan gave a half shrug. "I'll get you one of those 'I'm with stupid' t-shirts when we get out of here, you can wear it around me."

In the end, Xiaotong fished out a 5 mao coin from her jacket pocket and they flipped for it. She won. Luhan shoved his hands deep into his pockets and told himself yanking the spoon out of Xiaotong's hands and throwing it out the window was not a sensible plan of action, but it was hard, watching her swallow it.

"It's okay, I guess," Xiaotong said. "I mean, it's not hard any more."

"Okay, we'll wait another half an hour, and then I'll try some too," Luhan said. They inched up the whole day that way, taking turns at testing mouthfuls of beans, and by nighttime they felt safe enough to each eat a tin bowl's worth of beans, with the hot but flavourless broth.

"So, we're not dead yet," Luhan said, after an hour.

"Um, no," Xiaotong said, looking pained. "But I _really_ need to go to the bathroom and I don't think this place has plumbing."

**  
  
~*~*~*~   
  
**

"Okay," Luhan said the next morning, lowering himself back down to the floor to sit next to Xiaotong after visiting the designated 'toilet' area himself — the snowdrift outside the shack across the street. "Listen, we have to decide what to do."

Xiaotong was leaning against the still warm stove, hugging her knees to her chest in an up-right foetal position. "How long do you think we can last up here?" she asked, looking glumly at their supplies.

"Well, if we stick around here — a little while," Luhan said. "We've got wood, so we can keep a fire going for warmth, and we can space out those beans for weeks. I'd say we've got a month, if we don't go crazy before then. They must be searching for us everywhere by now."

"Unless they found the crash site," Xiaotong said. "If they couldn't manage to dig the plane out of the snow, they'd probably assume we were buried in there, and — um."

Luhan smacked the back of her head. "Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine and optimism this morning?"

"Ow! I'm just saying!" Xiaotong said. "We could build a fire, maybe? A really big one. If they're looking for us, surely they'll see the smoke?"

They chose the old house at the very end of the street, isolated from the others by a thoroughfare in case the fire spread out of their control.

"So, this is either a fantastic idea or a really, really bad one," Luhan said, looking up at the wooden roof rafters and trying to work out if they'd burn in place like they hoped or just crash down to the floor.

"Maybe we should push off some of the snow before we set it on fire?" Xiaotong said. "What if it just melts and puts the flames out?"

They used some old wooden barrels as stepping stones to climb up onto the roof to push the heaps of piled-up snow away, using the branches of their old lean-to as brooms. It wasn't nearly as cold as the day before, and they felt good enough to sing a little as they worked. Nothing fancy, the air was too dry for that, but they ran through some Theresa Teng before jokingly starting on those old communist jingles about working hard for the motherland, although they had to keep starting over again because they got the verses out of order, or forgot the words.

"Okay, I give in, I'm completely wimping out here," Luhan said, panting as he carefully climbed across the gable to the other side of the roof. "I think I need a nap."

"Oh my god, wait, Lu-ge!" Xiaotong said, grabbing his arm and pointing into the distance. Down the very steep slope at the end of the little town, there was a flash of black pavement and yellow paint from between the snow-capped trees.

It took them another hour to get down the slope, sliding on their asses most of the way regardless of the wetness it left on their clothes, and then they just collapsed in the middle of the road, breathing heavily. It took another half an hour — long enough for Luhan to be thinking about getting together some branches to start a fire — when they heard it, the low grumbling roar of a truck speeding along the mountain roads.

They jumped to their feet and waved their arms.

"You guys have car trouble?" the driver said, pushing open the passenger door and leaning out to speak to them. And then his eyes widened and he said, "holy fucking shit, you're —"

"More like plane trouble," Luhan said. He couldn't stop grinning, even though he could feel the corners of his dehydrated mouth cracking. "Give us a lift?"

"Fucking hell, get in. Oh my god," the trucker said, pushing the passenger door open wider, and clearing the seat next to him by just shoving everything down into the footwell, a stack of magazines and crumpled fast food wrappers and empty tobacco sleeves. "They've been looking for you guys for a week."

Luhan climbed up into the truck and hauled Xiaotong in after him by the arm, and they pulled the door shut, unzipping their jackets in the warmth of the heater.

"Where even are we?" Xiaotong asked.

"This is Wutai county," the trucker said. "We're near Xinzhou city. In Shanxi," he added when their faces showed no sign of recognition. They all looked at each other for a moment in silence. "So, uh, where do you want to go?"

"Um," Luhan said. "The nearest hospital, I guess. Listen, do you have a mobile phone we could borrow?"

"Yeah — sure, absolutely," the driver said, digging it out of a pocket. He restarted the engine and got them going again down the road. "Fucking hell," he said under his breath.

"You go ahead," Luhan said, giving Xiaotong the phone first.

Xiaotong stared at it for a second like she couldn't remember how technology worked, and then she dialled, and then she was saying tearfully, "Mum?" The outburst of noise from the other end of the line made Luhan jump a little even as far away as he was. "Mum! Mum, calm down — it's okay, we're okay — me and Luhan, we're both okay, we met a truck driver, we're in Shanxi — oh, I guess you knew that bit already. We're going to a hospital — wait, where are we going?" She directed this to the driver.

"People's First Hospital is the closest one I know of," the trucker said.

Xiaotong repeated the name to her mother. "I'll call you again as soon as we're there — yeah, I'm really fine, I promise. Lu-ge was amazing, he totally saved my life —"

Luhan had to blink hard a few times and he looked away at the trucker instead of eavesdropping further. "Hey, uncle, what's your name?"

"Oh, uh, Li Sidi." Li reached out a hand to shake.

"Lu Han," Luhan said, returning the handshake. "I guess you knew that already, huh? And thanks, by the way. This is really nice of you."

"No, no, it's nothing," Li said. "My daughter is going to have a fit when she hears about this, she's been crying over you nonstop."

"Well, you can tell her she and her friends have got front-row seats to any concert I give for the rest of my life, anytime she wants them," Luhan said. "Listen, did anyone else make it, from the plane? We haven't seen anyone."

"Yeah, the rest of your people all made it, apart from what's-his-name — ah, Deng Chao." Luhan felt his chest give a painful jolt. "And that Carina woman from Hong Kong. And one of the pilots didn't make it, he died in the ambulance. Oh, and there was another girl missing." 

"The air hostess," Luhan said. "I should look up her details, call her family."

"She didn't make it?"

"No," Luhan said, and rubbed his face, suddenly feeling exhausted. It was all starting to get a bit unreal. The heater was blowing a steady stream of warm air over his legs, and the rumble of the engine was soothing in a surprisingly womb-like manner. The pop song playing on the radio was so fucking ordinary it felt bizarre. 

And then Xiaotong said, "Okay, mum, dad, I have to let Lu-ge call his family too — I'll call you again, I promise, soon as we get there —" and then handed him the mobile.

Luhan stared at it, and then typed in his parent's number and waited. The ringing in his ear sounded weird and fake, and then someone who wasn't either his mother or father answered and said, "Lu household."

"Lao Gao?" Luhan said, and he screamed in Luhan's ear and then yelled again from a distance, "Auntie! Auntie, oh my god, auntie, it's Luhan — on the phone — it's Luhan —" and then his mother was on the line, and Luhan had to bend right over and rest his head on his knees for a minute to catch his breath before he could even speak.

By the time he was finished talking, Xiaotong was already tipping over, half asleep with exhaustion. And when Luhan straightened up again, she fell over the rest of the way and landed with her head on Luhan's lap, curled her legs up impossibly small onto the seat and just went straight under. Luhan slung an arm over her chest and let his own head fall back against the seat.

**  
  
~*~*~*~   
  
**

The hospital was a lot smaller than any other hospital Luhan had ever seen in his life, and the emergency room was empty when they arrived. The receptionist on the triage desk was watching a Korean soap opera and scratching at her scalp using the tip of a ballpoint pen. Four hours later, after Luhan was being rolled back into his room following a brain scan, the whole place looked like a fortress under siege: fifteen news vans up and down the street, police blocks set up across the front of the building.

"Honey, I'm really sorry about all this fuss, but don't worry, somebody from your people put the fear of god into the staff," a nurse told him when he asked her about Xiaotong. "They told us all that we'll lose our jobs if we breathe a word about either of you to anyone who isn't a family member." 

"Do me a favour and go make it clear that 'family member' includes the two of us," he said, "because if I don't get an answer, I'll rip this thing out of my arm and go find her myself."

He turned on the television, unsettled by how quiet and empty the room felt. CCTV News was showing a video of their unaired Keep Running episode, the three of them — him, Xiaotong, and Deng Chao (and boy, was _that_ going to hurt when it all sunk in) — were all stood together eating, with a Breaking News bulletin banner running across the bottom of the screen and a voiceover in closed-captioning, _with more on their miraculous escape, here is —_

"Someone who doesn't fucking know anything about it," Luhan said under his breath, and flipped to another channel. The same shit was on every network, all the news channels, even the foreign ones, and everything else was just too stupid, too loud, jangling at his nerves.

He'd mentally started a thirty minute countdown in his head, being pretty generous because he was fairly certain they couldn't have done anything too bad to the kid, and her ankle had looked a mess. Nevertheless he was still getting ready to yank out his IV drip and go wandering the corridor in his little gown when there was a timid knock on the door, and Xiaotong hopped in, with a nervous glance over her shoulder. She was wearing loose leggings and a t-shirt and one sneaker on the foot that wasn't in a cast, all of it squeaky brand-new.

"Aw man, they gave you clothes?" Luhan said. "That's not fair."

"Are you okay?" Xiaotong asked, at the same time. "Oh — yeah, they said I'm fine. Just a fractured ankle and a little dehydrated. But they wouldn't tell me if you were —"

"Yeah, me neither," Luhan said. "Are they letting you out of here?"

"I don't know, nobody's here yet," Xiaotong said. "I mean, there's about a billion people outside but they're all press and stuff, and the police said they'd give me an escort to a hotel, but —" She swallowed. "Is it okay if I just maybe wait here, until you —"

"Get over here before they catch you," Luhan said.

Xiaotong shut the door behind her and propped her crutches up against the wall before hopping over to the bed. Luhan put the television on again and backtracked a few channels until he found one showing a Disney film. Xiaotong untied her single sneaker and climbed onto the bed on top of the covers next to him to watch. She ended up sliding down the half-raised bed to curl up alongside his legs, head against his stomach, watching drowsily while Luhan flipped channels again, past more of the news bulletins.

"Are they — do they want you to do a press conference, too?" she asked him.

"Yeah," Luhan sighed. He'd already fielded half a dozen phone calls from various management people and lawyers, all of whom were on their way from Beijing, none of whom seemed to care about his Officially Diagnosed concussion. 

("On the bright side," someone on a conference call had actually said to him, "you've sold another three million albums this past week." There hadn't been any irony involved. Some other people on the line had actually cheered. 

"And hey, only four people are dead," he'd replied, which had put a merciful end to that particular line of conversation.)

Xiaotong said, "Is it okay if — do you think we could — can we do it together? If you don't mind —"

"Oh no, I figured I'd throw you to the wolves and sneak out the back entrance," Luhan said. "Are you for real?"

"Well, I didn't want to, you know —"

"Presume?" Luhan said, raising an eyebrow up. "I think we're a bit past that, Xiaotong."

"No, I don't mean — it's just that — we're back, right, and everything is so, and it's all, and — isn't it a bit weird?" Xiaotong sat up and waved her arm around, taking in the room, the beeping equipment measuring Luhan's vitals, the muted television, the curtains waving in the breeze, the whole ordinary normal civilised world around them.

"Yeah," Luhan said, quietly. "It's gonna be a bit weird for a while. But we'll get through it."

Xiaotong nodded a little. Then laid back down, closed her eyes, pillowed her head on his stomach and went to sleep.

The press conference was beyond a madhouse. The ZRTG people had tried to prepare them, but this wasn't something you could ever really get ready for. It wasn't just the entertainment press, it was everyone — people who reported from natural disaster and war zones and someone from the government, all of them determined to get their own questions in. It was so bad that, between flashbulb explosions, he saw a couple of paparazzi faint and get shoved down halfway across the room.

He squeezed Xiaotong's hand under the cover of the podium, which was stiffer with terror now than when she'd been half-frozen to death, and said, "Okay, just so you guys know, the only solid food we've had in the last week is some aeroplane snacks and hundred-year-old beans. And we have a date with the biggest spiciest bowl of hotpot after this, so keep that in mind and don't blame us if we run for it when this goes on too long."

"Can we actually do that?" Xiaotong whispered at him, except the microphone picked it up, and a ripple of laughter went around the room. It still felt a lot like being in a diving cage surrounded by great white sharks, but at least the sharks were smiling now.

Their publicists had written up a statement that was about three-quarters factual, and the reporters had absorbed about three-quarters of that in turn. There were a lot of stupid and inane questions about whether or not they'd been scared —"Um, yeah, a lot" and "I don't think I can accurately describe how terrified I was and still keep it family-friendly" — and how they felt about Deng Chao and the others being dead —"Obviously that's a tragedy, but I'd rather not talk about him until I've had a chance to talk to his wife" — and what had been going through their heads — Luhan found himself telling them about the Elvis thing for some reason, which made them strangely happy — and what they were going to do now they were safe.

"Go home," Xiaotong said, instantly.

"What she said," Luhan said. "Also, I lost a bet, so I've got a duet to organise, I guess."

The reporters ate that story up too, and Xiaotong brightened, like maybe she'd thought Luhan hadn't really meant it or something. Someone asked her what the worst part had been, and she said, "Um, right after the crash," and when they asked her why, she said, "Lu-ge was — he was — he'd been knocked out, and at first I thought — I thought — I couldn't get him to wake up, so yeah. That was really scary. And, I guess, later, when we were walking, and I kept slowing us down —"

"Okay, that's enough nonsense from you," Luhan said, shaking Xiaotong a little by the arm. "Just so you're all clear on this, she saved my life at least three times out there, so don't listen to a word she says," he told the assembled journalists.

Then they asked him what his worst moment was — completely predictably, but that didn't help prepare him. All of a sudden he was back there under that little overhang, ice cold all the way through, head throbbing, sick with dizziness, almost out of food and water, and he couldn't bring himself to speak. Xiaotong's hand pressed down on his, small and anxious, and Luhan dug up a fake smile from somewhere and said, "Let me just say that ancient beans on an empty stomach, it's really not very pretty."

The handlers somehow got them out of there, and into a car with darkened windows. They were tailed by about eight cars all the way to the little motel, which was apparently as close to five-star as it got in this neighbourhood, but when they got there, the car park was crammed completely full of fans — thousands of them just milling around in huge puffy coats, or sitting on the bonnets of their cars talking. There were even people on the roof, banners dangling out of windows all over the hotel, people having snowball fights and even some people selling hot food out of the back of their vans, and Luhan didn't have to look hard to see there wasn't any sign of security.

Xiaotong stared out at the crowd in complete horror. The driver took one look at the car park and drove straight past. "Guys, I am not going in there," he said, looking at them in the rearview mirror.

"No kidding," Luhan said. "Is there another hotel around here? Something smaller? More privacy?"

Xiaotong was sitting half up, looking out the back window at the giant crowd behind them, her mouth hanging open. "Oh my god, just look at them." People had realised it was their car, thanks to the press tailing them, and now some of the morons were actually running after the car into the middle of the street, waving signs and banners and screaming. The driver increased his speed and pulled away, cutting through a deserted supermarket car park to ditch the trailing cars, and pulled out onto another street, past another hotel not even a kilometre from the first place: it looked packed too. 

"Did they all just, I don't know, buy any old hotel room around here just in case we showed up?"

"Okay, forget another hotel," Luhan said. "We need another town."

"I can take you back towards the mountains," the driver offered. "There's a bunch of little Buddhist retreats out there. They've got maybe five rooms in the whole place. I doubt they're booked, they're pretty expensive. Tourist traps for rich westerners, mostly."

"There," Xiaotong said immediately. "Yes, oh my god, right there."

"So you only want the room for one night?" the hotel clerk asked, over the driver's phone.

"Yeah," said Luhan.

"You're in luck! A couple checking in today had their flight cancelled, so they won't be getting here until tomorrow evening. I'm sure they'd be happy to save the cost of a night. What's your name?"

"Uh," Luhan said. "Wang?"

The driver was an absolute angel and stopped at a deserted bank branch so they could get some cash out of an ATM, and at the hotel he went in and got them their room key, so they somehow managed to sneak into their suite without anyone seeing them. It looked pretty much what Luhan imagined heaven looked like — a little too much like heaven, actually, all white and gold everywhere, a fluffy white canopied bed covered with rose petals in the shape of a heart, and buddhas and flowers on every surface.

"Aw, no, that's so sad," Xiaotong said, going over to the dressing table by the window: on it was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, with a _Congratulations on your wedding!_ card next to it, and a tray of cute heart-shaped chocolates. "Their flight got cancelled on their honeymoon."

Luhan fell down backwards on the bed, laughing.

"What?" Xiaotong said. "How can you laugh about it, that's so mean."

"You're so naive, Xiaotong, it's sweet," Luhan said.

"Huh?" Xiaotong said, and then got all pink and embarrassed. "Wait, oh my god, don't tell me we're in the honeymoon suite?" She looked at the bed, like it was going to eat her alive. "I'm not sleeping on that, who knows how many people have had gross sex holidays here."

Luhan, lying prostrate on the bed, laughed until he started wheezing, and then Xiaotong threw the shorter bathrobe at his head — the _hers_ — and refused to hand over the other one — the _his_ — even though the sleeves were too long for her.

It was a pretty luxurious place for a supposed Buddhist retreat — a huge flat-screen television, overstuffed couch, a fireplace, and even the floors were heated. There was an in-room hot tub, as big as a swimming pool, with steam rising up off the water. They looked at it, looked at each other, and Luhan shrugged.

"Okay, so, we've got a choice: underwear in the tub, or underwear in the bed. I dunno about you, but I'm voting underwear in the bed."

"Um, yeah, okay," Xiaotong said. "I suppose we've worn less around each other than that."

They both phoned home again, first, and then Luhan called his manager and got a panicked publicist instead who screamed faintly at him down the phone, "oh my god, where are you?"

"Relax," Luhan said. "The doctors said I have to take it easy until my brain heals, so no shouting. We're both fine, we haven't got trampled by a crazed mob — thanks for the awesome planning, by the way — and the driver said he'd come pick us up in the morning. Didn't he tell you where we are? Brilliant, I'll have to give him an even bigger tip. No, I'm not gonna tell you either. Bye!"

As soon as he hung up the phone rang again, and for a split second Luhan thought maybe the publicist had used some sort of crazy caller-ID spy software to trace them, but it was just the hotel clerk. "I thought I would ask, the guests whose room you're staying in had ordered a dinner in their room tonight — do you want it? It's fine if not —"

"Oh, hell yes," Luhan said, and had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from bursting out laughing again, maybe a little hysterically, and totally freaking the poor clerk out. Once he got himself under control and could speak without feeling like he was about to have some sort of psychotic breakdown, he said, "Listen, let me ask you something, is it possible for me to pick up the tab for this couple? No, I mean, their whole stay. In fact, throw everything else you have on it, room-service every night, massages, mini-bar, anything — yeah, I'm being completely serious, I'll give you my credit card for it tomorrow," because he had to spread some of this luck around a little before something bad happened to him to even things out again.

The personal chef did get a little bug-eyed when he showed up to deliver their room service, but he was a nice guy and promised to keep their secret overnight at the very least, although he asked them both to autograph the fancy menu so people would eventually believe him.

"I'll sign anything you want, just tell me this menu is true and there really is slow-roasted pork belly and lobster involved," Luhan told him.

"I feel like I ate too much," Xiaotong said, afterwards, and collapsed on the couch in a pitiful crumbled heap. "I don't think I can move."

"Same," Luhan said dreamily, sprawled out on the bed, running a hand back and forth over his rounded belly.

They turned on the television and watched reporters running all over the county, trying to find them and failing. In desperation, as the prime-time new hour hit, CCTV resorted to showing segments in front of different hotels where they weren't, about how the two of them had gone into seclusion at an undisclosed location to avoid the crowds. Nobody really seemed to mind that they hadn't actually appeared. Maybe their re-disappearance added to the mystery of the whole thing.

They turned off the television and tuned the radio onto some classical station, quiet and soothing in the background, and finally crawled over to the hot tub. Luhan broke out the champagne.

"You can't have any," he told Xiaotong.

"You made me last time!" Xiaotong said.

"Yeah, and I learnt my lesson," Luhan said. Xiaotong grabbed the bottle away from him and took a swig, defiantly, which was somewhat ruined when she started coughing and spluttering as the bubbles got up her nose.

"You're so predictable," Luhan said, and squawked when Xiaotong shook up the bottle and sprayed most of it on him in revenge until Luhan got her in a headlock.

The exhaustion hit them hard only a little while later, and they dragged themselves out of the tub and towelled down and crawled into the huge, warm bed. Xiaotong yawned once, shut her eyes, and said, "night, Lu-ge," sleepily, before snuggling down into the pillows and going out like a light.

"Night," Luhan said.

With the lights off and the moon high in the sky, he could see the snow-covered mountains through the windows, a lighter blue against the deep navy of the sky. He stared out at them and tried to convince himself to go to sleep, his brain to turn off, but he couldn't. Couldn't help thinking about just how huge they were, how close it had really been — one more snowy day to hide the road, turning left instead of right and missing the houses, picking a different tree to hide behind during the avalanche, switching seats with Chao-ge on the plane. 

He forced himself to lie down and shut his eyes. Next to him, Xiaotong's breath had evened out, deep and slow and steady. She shifted onto her side and curled a little closer, and Luhan noticed for the first time that she was wearing the t-shirt he'd been given at the hospital rather than her own. Luhan yawned hard all of a sudden, and pretty much like that, he slid under.

**  
~*~*~*~   
  
  
**

At least one person in their management teams was a real human being with a modicum of empathy, because they didn't get sent to the tiny local airstrip; instead the driver took them the three hours to Taiyuan airport, where another team of handlers whisked them straight into the first-class lounge.

Luhan flopped down on a sofa and stared out of the window that overlooked the runway, with its giant planes doing up and coming down like clockwork.

Xiaotong sat down next to him. "It's kind of reassuring, I guess?"

"Yeah," Luhan said, more for her benefit than anything.

The airline representative came in to talk to them, a too-smiley woman who was about ninety percent teeth. "Now, we can charter a flight for you, which will take a little longer, or we can put you on a commercial flight in business class —"

"I looked it up on the internet," Xiaotong interrupted, "the odds of a commercial airliner crashing are like, one in ten bajillion or something."

"Commercial," Luhan said, nodding. "I'm totally down for commercial. Commercial is fantastic. I love commercial."

"Yeah, me too," Xiaotong said.

"Okay," the rep said. "Two business class tickets to Beijing coming right up. We'll get you two booked in and on your way in no time," and she disappeared out of the room.

Xiaotong was staring down at her hands, slumped a little. "It's going to be great," she said, after a minute. "To go home, and have some time off, before getting back to all the, you know, promotion, and." She stopped.

"Yeah," Luhan said. He had all sorts of plans to get started on himself — another album, maybe even another tour. His management was probably shuffling around potential dates already. A week off on compassionate leave and then it would be right back into the whirl of showbiz for the both of them. More stupid rehearsals and events, nailing down the clothes, fending off over-eager makeup artists. He had no idea if the rest of the season of Keep Running was even going to go ahead. And where would Xiaotong be? Somewhere off filming her boxing drama, filling her time with more varieties and talk shows. Back to normal, for a given value of normal. It could be months before their paths crossed again.

After a little while, the airline rep came back in and said, "Okay. The next flight to Beijing is boarding shortly. I've booked the whole section in business class for you, and we'll get you on in about half an hour, just before they close the doors. The cabin crew has all been alerted, they won't let any other passengers bother you. Once you land, a driver will meet you each at the arrivals gate and drive you home. That's the city centre, for you, Miss Guan, and Haidian for you, Mr Lu."

Xiaotong nodded, then lifted her head up and smiled at Luhan, a little tremulously. "I — I suppose this is it."

Luhan looked at her, and then he said to the rep, "Can you cancel my driver?"

"I… sure?" the rep said.

Xiaotong said, "But — oh. No, Lu-ge — you can't!"

"Okay, let's do that then," Luhan said, reaching out to cover Xiaotong's mouth. The airline rep lady glanced from him to Xiaotong, a little puzzled, then left the room to make the necessary changes to the arrangements. Luhan leant over and grabbed the phone on the side table and dialed his home number one-handedly, still muffling Xiaotong's protests with the other. "Mum?" he said. "Listen, are you okay with it if I get home a little later than planned?"

"Darling, you're alive. That's really all your father and I care about. Right now you could say you want to move to Antarctica, change your name and never call me again, and I wouldn't bat an eyelid," his mother said. "You should enjoy this phase while it lasts, by the way, because I'm sure I'll be over it by the time Mother's Day comes around."

"Good, because I was about to be worried," Luhan said. "I'm just going to get Xiaotong home safe to her parents. Can't have her wandering off now."

Xiaotong finally squirmed loose from his grasp. "Lu-ge, I told you, I'm fine, you really don't have to —"

"And then I'm going to bring her home with me after," he added, and covered the receiver long enough to tell Xiaotong, "And yes, you do have to."

"Oh," Xiaotong said, and quit arguing with him. "Okay."

Luhan finished talking to his mother and hung up the phone. He put his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back, stretching his arms over the back of the couch. Xiaotong settled in next to him. "So listen, about that boxing drama this summer…"

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> warnings: an unnamed air hostess dies, her corpse is still on the plane with the survivors (very mild gore, a sentence or two). deng chao and carina lau both die off screen, as well as an unnamed pilot. sorry to those people lmao.


End file.
